Just before Easter, the exhaust fell off the car.
Well, the rear silencer to be precise. A turn of events that leaves a sizable hole in your bank balance, with no discernible silver lining, beyond no longer sounding like Jenson Button is driving down the road.
But on this occasion, Emma had other ideas.
So we returned from our local tyre and exhaust place, not just quietly (thanks to the new rear silencer), but also with a car full of free olds tyres. Continue reading
We’re guest tweeters of the week all this week on Twitter @SmallholdersUK
Followers of this Blog get their updates in one of three ways. Either you’ve signed up on the website for direct email alerts, or you see posting on Facebook or Twitter. Continue reading
We didn’t just grow vegetables in our first year at The Secret Acre, we took time out to get married too. In our own field, at our own boutique, indie style festival for family and friends. But that’s a whole other story!
However, like many modern marriages these days, we met later in life. Which got us thinking about how we would celebrate our anniversaries. Continue reading
“A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself” – May Sarton.
Personally I like to think my life so far has fortunately been a series of triumphs set against a few disasters. But the jury is definitely still out when it comes to our new veg beds!
Certainly in this first year, there have been more triumphs than losses, which is nice. But this is probably mostly because we are still easily pleased! Continue reading
And another year goes by. So last month I put up two curtain poles and a washing line at The Secret Acre. Because October marked our first year anniversary of moving in. And rather embarrassingly these were the last of the ‘quick’ jobs still undone from that very first month!
But missing curtain poles aside, October was a chance for us to reflect on the good and bad points of our first year. Fortunately, perhaps, our positives and negatives were remarkably similar. Continue reading
We’ve been away from The Secret Acre for two weeks on honeymoon. Before we left we took the precaution of picking and eating all the courgettes. But these buggers grow fast, and on our return we were greeted by four massive marrows already the size of torpedoes!
In August’s issue of Home Farmer magazine their advice on growing courgettes to marrow size was simply “don’t do it!” So faced with our honeymoon marrows, anyone else got any good (and preferably tasty!) suggestions?
“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land” – Abraham Lincoln
If Abe, the dollar bill guy was right, then we ought to be celebrating our heroes of self-sufficiency.
But who are your own personal heroes?
Take our poll and let us know! Continue reading
If I’m honest, up to now I’ve been a bit of a Flower Nazi, much to Emma’s annoyance.
In my defence, being an urban container grower with a flat’s six foot balcony, or a terrace’s five foot square concrete backyard, doesn’t leave much room for flowers taking up valuable growing space. Continue reading
Spring’s arrival of wild garlic has usually been our second major event in the kitchen store cupboard calendar, even as urban foragers before moving to The Secret Acre.
Of course moving to a new area this year first necessitated seeking out local woodland areas suitably carpeted with the Ramsons. But wild garlic has to rate as the easiest of forages. Continue reading
Of course the first thing the novice needs to tackle, when getting going on veg growing, is the sowing of the seed. A timeless wonder of nature explained so well in The Young Ones I seem to remember. Continue reading
